Desperate measures

In the interest of kinda-sorta research this morning, I looked up the population for Grand Forks, N.D. It's about halfway between 56,000 and 57,000.

So once again I was wrong. My guess was 12.

Still, it's not a lot of souls when you consider North Dakota, whose state motto would be A Big Ol' Expanse O' Nothin' if it weren't Come For The Windchill, Stay For The Mind-Numbing Isolation. So I guess if the NHL were going to go hide out somewhere and finish its season in windswept Bastard Plague-resistant splendor, North Dakota would be a logical choice.

That's the plan, by the way. Or at least a plan.

Yes, the National Hockey League is thinking of finishing its season in Grand Forks come summer, playing all its remaining games in front of nobody in Ralph Engelstad Arena. Just fly in all 31 teams and 713 players, quarantine and regularly test them for COVID-19, then have every team play every game in one arena in front of echoes and silent seatbacks.

After which the team that wins the Stanley Cup gets to parade around an indoor vacant lot while "We Are The Champions" bounces off all that big empty.

Weee (we-we-we) are the champions (ons-ons-ons) ...

Yeesh.  Talk about a bushel of silliness.

But desperate times call for desperate measures, and so the NHL is not alone in desperately clinging to this fantasy of finishing its season. The NBA is talking about doing much the same thing in Vegas. And the other day Major League Baseball floated the idea of starting its season in late May or early June in Phoenix, because it's home to so many of the clubs' spring training facilities.

So, Baseball in a Bubble, Basketball in a Bubble, Hockey in a Bubble. And just as easy to burst.

Set aside for a moment the astounding impracticability of keeping hundreds of restless premier athletes not only apart from the general populace but from each other, except when it's unavoidable. Instead, think for a nanosecond about the splendid optics of professional athletes getting ready access to the testing most of the great unwashed still don't have.

Yeah, boy. If that doesn't get folks storming the Bastille, nothing will.

And, sure, I get it, the people who run professional sports in this country are desperate to keep the money tap flowing. It's why college football (which counts as a professional sport) could wind up playing in the dead of winter, or even next spring, because a season lost to COVID-19 would blow to shards all those Power-5 athletic budgets.

Certainly it would be nice to have sports back again, even as weird and truncated and out-of-season as they would be. In fact that's been the disingenuous selling point for the sports execs: We're doing this for the fans! They need us more than ever right now!

No, mostly they just need the revenue stream more than ever. Because let's face it, Sabers vs. Flyers in an empty building on a Sunday afternoon doesn't mean jack to someone who's got a parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle on a ventilator somewhere.

Even if that someone does have a throwback Bobby Clarke jersey. Or Gilbert Perreault.